TCGAnalyzeR: An Online Pan-Cancer Tool for Integrative Visualization of Molecular and Clinical Data of Cancer Patients for Cohort and Associated Gene Discovery

Abstract

For humans, the parallel processing capability of visual recognition allows for faster comprehension of complex scenes and patterns. This is essential, especially for clinicians interpreting big data for whom the visualization tools play an even more vital role in transforming raw big data into clinical decision making by managing the inherent complexity and monitoring patterns interactively in real time. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database’s size and data variety challenge the effective utilization of this valuable resource by clinicians and biologists. We re-analyzed the five molecular data types, i.e., mutation, transcriptome profile, copy number variation, miRNA, and methylation data, of ~11,000 cancer patients with all 33 cancer types and integrated the existing TCGA patient cohorts from the literature into a free and efficient web application: TCGAnalyzeR. TCGAnalyzeR provides an integrative visualization of pre-analyzed TCGA data with several novel modules: (i) simple nucleotide variations with driver prediction; (ii) recurrent copy number alterations; (iii) differential expression in tumor versus normal, with pathway and the survival analysis; (iv) TCGA clinical data including metastasis and survival analysis; (v) external subcohorts from the literature, curatedTCGAData, and BiocOncoTK R packages; (vi) internal patient clusters determined using an iClusterPlus R package or signature-based expression analysis of five molecular data types. TCGAnalyzeR integrated the multi-omics, pan-cancer TCGA with ~120 subcohorts from the literature along with clipboard panels, thus allowing users to create their own subcohorts, compare against existing external subcohorts (MSI, Immune, PAM50, Triple Negative, IDH1, miRNA, metastasis, etc.) along with our internal patient clusters, and visualize cohort-centric or gene-centric results interactively using TCGAnalyzeR.